That is as obvious as the Phillies' 0-for-20 skid with runners in scoring position heading into their game Tuesday night against the Miami Marlins, or their ranking near the bottom of the National League in average, runs, and home runs.

"We just haven't been able to get consistent offense, and that's been our theme pretty much all year long," Amaro said.

"I'm not quite sure what it is, they're just not getting the big base hit when we need it. Very few two-out base hits. With runners in scoring position, we're not very good. I mean across the board. And it's not just one guy. We're talking about several guys, and that's unfortunate. Right now we're not able to rely on somebody to pick us up."

The question is how Amaro goes about addressing the Phillies offensive problems. He mentioned possible trades at the deadline that can address needs in the short term and the long term. If Amaro decides that the Phillies will be too far back, then he'll address the long-term needs by trading away veterans. If he decides that the Phillies can still make a run for the NL East, then he'll address the offense by getting established hitters.

"These next 10 games leading into the All-Star break are going to tell us a lot about where we're going to go," Amaro said.

Those games are all on the road, as the Phillies began a 10-game trip to Miami, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee. They were 10 games under .500, but 8 ½ games back of NL East leading Atlanta entering Tuesday.

But Amaro made it clear that if he decides to go for the long-term deals, he's not interested in a rebuilding plan that could take five years or more.

"I said I can't blow this team up … and expect us to be [expletive] for the next five or six years," Amaro said. "I don't think that's the right way to go about our franchise. Our fans, our organization, I think we owe it to a lot of people, if we do have to go into a transition, it's going to be a shorter one than that.

"There are ways to do it. You have to make shrewd moves, make intelligent moves and try to continue to do that so that the drop off isn't long-term. So if we have to go a step backward for a year or two to move forward, then that's what we'll try to do."

Amaro was then asked if he and his assistants can be relied on to make those kind of shrewd moves. After all, the Phillies traded away veterans Hunter Pence and Shane Victorino at the deadline in 2012 without getting a contributor at the major-league level in return. They also traded away Cliff Lee in December 2009 for three prospects, only one of whom remains in the organization at Triple-A Lehigh Valley.

"Whenever you try to make moves to acquire talent, it's always a crapshoot," Amaro said. "When we talk about the Cliff Lee trade, we decided it was important for us to add to our lower levels of the minor leagues because we moved so much lower level talent. And at the time we had a lot of major league talent that wasn't going to go anywhere. So we were viewing a lot of those moves as long-term moves.

"Some of those moves don't work. Some of those players don't pan out. It doesn't mean they weren't talented players. You just don't know whether they're going to be major league players."

But Amaro doesn't look at this situation as if his job is riding on his success, whether it's at the trade deadline at the end of the month, or even in potential deals after the season.

"I'm not worried about my job," Amaro said. "My job is to try to do what's best for the organization, short-term and long-term. I feel very good about our ability and our staff's ability to do that."